Research Guides: Basic Literature Research Guide: Doing Literary Research

Primary Sources

Other ZSR Primary Source Databases
Full listing of all the ZSR primary source databases
English Literature Primary Souces

Early English Books Online - EEBO This link opens in a new window
Full text of books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1475 and 1700. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Corresponds to the Pollard and Redgrave, and Wing Short-Title Catalogues, as well as Thomason Tracts. Coverage: 1473-1700
Early English Prose Fiction This link opens in a new window
Over 200 works of fictional prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500-1700. Coverage: 1500-1700
Early American Imprints, Series I & II (combined) This link opens in a new window
An electronic version of the Early American Imprints sets. Combined search of both the Evans collection and the Shaw & Shoemaker collection. Coverage: 1639-1819
Early American Fiction This link opens in a new window
A collection of American novels and short stories written before 1875. Includes both well-known and obscure figures. Coverage: 1789-1875
Eighteenth-Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
Contains 96 works in English prose by writers from the British Isles. Coverage: 1700-1780
Eighteenth Century Collections Online - ECCO This link opens in a new window
Full text--including page images--of books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1701 and 1800. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Includes ECCO parts I and II. Coverage: 1701-1800
Eighteenth Century Drama This link opens in a new window
Explore the Larpent Collection from the Huntington Library – a unique archive of almost every play submitted for licence between 1737 and 1824. Larpent preserved the original submissions, over 2,500 of which are presented here.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
Includes 250 novels from the period 1786 to 1903, including works by all the major Victorian novelists such as Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Eliot and Hardy, as well as the landmarks of Gothic and other fiction from the Romantic period. Coverage: 1786-1903
Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Primary source collections of the “long” nineteenth century. Collections are sourced through partnerships with major world libraries and specialist libraries. Content includes monographs, newspapers, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, and more. Coverage: 1769-1906
Literary Manuscripts: Berg This link opens in a new window
Traces the genesis of some of the period’s greatest literary masterpieces through the unique manuscripts of their authors. Each author collection is included in its entirety, allowing users to browse and search the manuscripts as they would in the Berg Reading Room. Authors represented include: Matthew Arnold, The Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
Literary Manuscripts: Leeds This link opens in a new window
This resource contant manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. Alongside original compositions are copied verses, translations, songs and riddles.
Perdita Manuscripts This link opens in a new window
This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. Their goal was to identify and describe all manner of writing by early modern women from diaries to works of drama. Coverage: 1500-1700
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare This link opens in a new window
Contains 11 major editions from the First Folio of 1623 to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, 28 separate contemporary printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha, and related works. Also contains more than one hundred adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coverage: 1591-1911
New Oxford Shakespeare Online This link opens in a new window
The New Oxford Shakespeare presents an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited from first principles from the base-texts themselves, and drawing on the latest textual and theatrical scholarship.

Primary Sources - Texts - Poetry

African American Poetry This link opens in a new window
Contains nearly 3,000 poems by African American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coverage: 1750-1900
American Poetry This link opens in a new window
Contains over 40,000 poems by more than 200 poets, covering the Colonial period to the early twentieth century. Coverage: 1600-1900
English Poetry This link opens in a new window
Contains over 165,000 poems essentially comprising the complete English poetic canon from 600-1900. More than 1,250 poets are represented. Coverage: 600-1900
Faber Poetry Library This link opens in a new window
Contains the works of 50 poets comprising 140 volumes of poetry. The Faber list includes Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath. Coverage: 1925-1999
Twentieth-Century African American Poetry This link opens in a new window
A collection of poetry written by the most important and influential African American poets of the twentieth century. Includes over 10,000 poems by around 70 poets, including Rita Dove, Robert Hayden, Sherley Anne Williams, Bob Kaufman, and Langston Hughes. Coverage: 1901-2000
Twentieth Century American Poetry This link opens in a new window
Includes over 50,000 poems by over 300 poets, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, and Cathy Song. Coverage: 1901-2000
Twentieth Century English Poetry This link opens in a new window
Over 500 volumes of poetry including W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Graves, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Benjamin Zephaniah and Carol Ann Duffy. Coverage: 1885-2000

Writing and Language Help

ZSR subscribes to the following items that can help you as you write papers for English classes.

MLA Handbook Plus This link opens in a new window
The go-to resource for writers of research papers and anyone citing sources. MLA Handbook Plus includes the full text of the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook as well as the first editions of both the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy and the MLA Guide to Undergraduate Research in Literature.
Oxford English Dictionary - OED This link opens in a new window
Corresponds to the 2nd (1989) edition of the printed OED. The online version will be updated quarterly with new and revised definitions. Includes extensive coverage of word etymologies. This version is also searchable by the date that a word entered the English language. Coverage: 1989 Edition, with updates

Background Resources for Literature Research

Gale Literature This link opens in a new window
Combined interface for searching across multiple literature criticism resources simultaneously. Sources searched include Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, Shakespearean Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and more. Coverage: varies
Literary Reference Center Plus This link opens in a new window
Contains author biographies, literary criticism, journal articles and book reviews. Coverage: Details not available

Searching Primo for books and more

Use Primo - the library's search interface - to locate books and other materials all in a single search. Here are a few tips to get you started:

To find items on a theme or issue in an author's work, enter the name of the author/work and a term that best conveys the issue you are researching, e.g. Macbeth and feminis* (the asterisk is a truncation symbol that allows for word variants, such as feminist or feminism). Keep in mind that not every work of literature will have a lot of research on it - you may need to back up from your initial search to something more broad.
To find works about a literary author or other figure, enter the person's name in quotes, i.e. "Jane Austen" - adding in other terms will help narrow down your results - i.e. "Jane Austen" marriage or "Maya Angelou" "civil rights"
To find works around a particular genre, us that genre in your search i.e. poetry abolition or "short story" war

Journal Databases

Literary Criticism Databases

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles, books, chapters of books, conference proceedings, dissertations, and working papers on topics relating to literature, modern languages, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage: 1926-
Humanities International Index This link opens in a new window
An index to creative, critical and scholarly English-language literary journals and magazines (primarily American and Canadian). Most of these journals are either not indexed elsewhere or are indexed only partially in other indexing services. All publications are indexed in their entirety - including fiction and poems. Coverage: 1975-
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A full-text database of archived issues of academic journals. Since JSTOR is a backfiles project, a typical coverage range is the beginning of a journal until three or five years ago. Supported in part by the Dail Endowment Fund. Coverage: Varies
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the full text of over 100 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities and social sciences. Coverage: Varies
ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window
Provides content and tools to support the study of literature from a variety of sources including diverse primary texts, criticism, full-text journals, book reviews, dissertations, eBooks, reference material, audio, and video. Coverage: varies

Other Databases Of Interest

America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
America: History and Life provides abstracts and citations from reviews and dissertations about the history and culture of the United States and Canada from the earliest recorded times to the present. See Historical Abstracts for world history. Coverage: 1964-
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Historical Abstracts provides indexing and abstracts for journal articles, books, and dissertations covering the history of the world from 1450-- except the U.S. and Canada. For similar coverage of the U.S. and Canada, use America History and Life. Coverage: 1954-
International Medieval Bibliography This link opens in a new window
A bibliography of modern scholarship concerning the European Middle Ages (c.450-1500). The entries are drawn from over 4000 periodicals and from over 5000 miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections and Festschriften). Coverage: 1967-
Contemporary Women's Issues (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
Covers women s issues from 190 countries, with information available in full-text. Disciplines include sociology, psychology, health, education, business administration and political science. Coverage: 1992-
Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
Performing Arts Periodicals Database indexes around 400 scholarly and trade journals, magazines, books, and newspapers covering theater, dance, film, television, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling, and more. It draws from both current files and selected backfiles to 1864 and 134 publications are included in full text. Coverage: 1864-

Rosalind Tedford

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ZSR Library
Room 457A

Subjects: American History, English Literature, Law, Political Science

Instruction & Outreach Librarian

Meghan Webb

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webbmm@wfu.edu

Subjects: Environmental Studies & Sustainability, First Year Seminars, Social Sciences - General, Writing Studies

Basic Literature Research Guide: Doing Literary Research

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